3676 - How Protest Became Terrorism; Supreme Court Run Amok w/ Sufia Khalid, Chris Geidner

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3676 – How Protest Became Terrorism; Supreme Court Run Amok
Guests: Safiyyah Khalid (Muslim Legal Fund of America), Chris Geidner (Law Dork Newsletter)
Date: June 29, 2026

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Overview

This episode of The Majority Report centers on two major political-legal crises:

1. The criminalization of protest in the U.S.—specifically focusing on the harsh federal prosecution of the "Prairie Land Nine," anti-ICE protesters now facing decades-long sentences under terrorism laws.
2. The rightward shift and dramatic recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, especially around immigration, agency power, and democratic processes.

Host Sam Seder is joined by Safiyyah Khalid, the attorney for one of the Prairie Land Nine and deputy director at the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and Chris Geidner, Supreme Court journalist and publisher of the Law Dork newsletter. Together, they offer insight, analysis, and stark warnings about the current state of American democracy, protest rights, and judicial authority.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rising Progressive Fortunes and Democratic Party Tensions

(04:00–20:38)

• Sam reflects on the fear and pushback from "moderate"/conservative Democrats as progressive candidates continue to gain ground, especially via DSA-backed victories in various states.
• He criticizes the so-called moderate wing as motivated more by personal power than genuine ideology:

  “These people don’t mobilize. These people hire people to canvas. They don’t canvas.” (06:40, Sam Seder)

• Clip of socialist NY Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani defending Democratic Socialism’s real-world impact and challenging the fearmongering narrative pushed by Republicans and mainstream media.
  “We’ve delivered the lowest recorded crime in our city’s history. That’s what it looks like to have democratic socialism.” (07:47, Mamdani via Emma Vigeland)
• Sam and co-hosts discuss the shifting targets of GOP/media demonization campaigns and the inability of the right to effectively weaponize socialist victories the way they did with AOC or Ilhan Omar.
• AOC’s recent call for new Democratic leadership is highlighted, as is the need for specificity in calls for change.

  “If people can’t recognize that the game has fundamentally changed and can’t adapt, then they need to make room for others who can.” (11:07, AOC via Sophia Khalid)

• Sam observes the growing institutional strength of DSA and the way progressive infrastructure now enables discipline and resilience impossible for earlier leftist officeholders.
• Republicans, exemplified by House Speaker Mike Johnson, attempt to paint DSA’s platform as radical/“scary”—abolishing the Electoral College, public ownership, ending U.S. support for Israel—but co-hosts ridicule these as long-standing, non-shocking progressive goals.

2. Case Study: The Prairie Land Nine — Criminalizing Dissent

(25:38–41:33)

Background and Legal Dilemma (25:38–32:30)

• Attorney Safiyyah Khalid details the case of her client Maricela Rueda, a young, nonviolent artist and mother, now facing 30–100 year sentences after participating in an anti-ICE noise demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center, Texas (July 4, 2025).
• The federal government used National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 to reclassify nonviolent protest activities (like fireworks, chanting) as "material support of terrorism," allowing for enhanced sentencing.
• Novel "Pinkerton liability" theory applied: any demonstrator could be charged if violence was even "foreseeable," despite jury acquitting on actual violence charges (except the one person who fired a weapon).

Structural Threats to Protest Rights (32:30–40:44)

• Unprecedented use of “material support of terrorism” statutes, typically reserved for ISIS/Al Qaeda, against domestic protesters:
  • Even minor property damage or "doxxing" could qualify as terrorism under this expanded interpretation.
  • Terrorism enhancements in sentencing allow for extreme, disproportionate prison terms.
• Khalid draws stark contrast:

  “The average sentence for January 6th defendants was two years … These nonviolent critics of the government are getting 50 to 100-year life sentences.” (35:06, Safiyyah Khalid)

• The law does not require group affiliation; just protest + damage = terrorism. Even speech can count as "material support."

  “You can be charged under this material support of terrorism statute. Domestically, there is no group requirement. It can touch anybody.” (39:33, Khalid)

• Safiyyah highlights constitutional concerns (First, Eighth Amendments), unprecedented sentence disparities, and chilling effect on First Amendment-protected protest.

Paths Forward and Public Action (37:19–41:33)

• Full appeals are planned due to numerous legal irregularities (use of acquitted conduct in sentencing, bias, prevention of self-defense claims, admission of irrelevant "Antifa" expert, etc.).
• Public resources: DFW Support Committee and MLFA.org provide case details and updates.

“This is a dangerous expansion of how terrorism laws are being applied—pushing what is First Amendment activity into the national security space.” (30:35, Khalid)

3. The Supreme Court: Immigration, Executive Power, and Democratic Evisceration

(44:03–78:46)

a) Immigration Rulings — Power Untethered, Process Denied

[45:37–64:30]

• Temporary Protected Status (TPS):

  • SCOTUS ruled (by Alito) that there is no judicial review if DHS decides to remove TPS protection, no matter how arbitrary, racist, or dangerous the decision is.
  • Example: 1.5 million Haitians, Syrians, others could lose status.

  “What Alito said is, every step leading to that final determination is a part of the determination. Therefore, you can’t challenge any of it.” (50:01, Geidner)

• Metering Case:

  • Court upholds policy barring asylum seekers who haven’t set literal foot on U.S. soil—even if U.S. agents prevent them at the border.

  “This is using the preposition 'in' to create a humanitarian crisis.” (56:11, Geidner referencing Sotomayor’s dissent)

  • Justice Sotomayor’s powerful bench dissent evokes the story of the MS St. Louis (Jewish refugees rejected in WWII).
  • Ruling incentivizes illegal crossings, as even legal attempts to request asylum are deliberately obstructed.

b) Internal Court Drama & Speculation

[65:01–71:38]

• Alito’s bitter exchange with Sotomayor over bench dissents, and speculation over his mood/state—raising questions about a possible retirement and shifting Court dynamics.

c) Agency Power — Undermining the Regulatory State

[72:05–77:52]

• Rulings split along ideological lines:
  • FTC Case (Slaughter): President can now fire FTC commissioners at will, stripping away longstanding protections for agency expertise and bipartisan governance.
  • Fed Case: However, the President cannot fire Federal Reserve members at will, as that could dangerously influence financial markets.
• Implications: Future administrations (especially a Trump return) will be able to decapitate regulatory agencies and further their anti-regulatory agenda even without Senate support. Looming threat to the NLRB, CPSC, EEOC, and more.

d) Voting Rights — A Rare ‘Win’

[73:22–74:14]

• Court upholds states' ability to count ballots received after Election Day as long as they're postmarked in time, staving off the most aggressive right-wing legal attacks (for now).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Sam Seder (on 'moderate' Democrats):

  “Their dilemma… is less about ideology and more about their own personal power and wealth accumulation… They don’t mobilize. They hire people to canvas. They don’t canvas.” (06:40)

• Zohran Mamdani:

  “We’ve delivered free childcare... tens of millions of dollars back to tenants… the lowest recorded crime in our city’s history. That’s what it looks like to have democratic socialism.” (07:47)

• AOC (via Sophia Khalid):

  “If people can’t recognize that the game has fundamentally changed and can’t adapt, then they need to make room for others who can.” (11:07)

• Safiyyah Khalid:

  “You can be charged under this material support of terrorism statute. Domestically, there is no group requirement. It can touch anybody.” (39:33)

• Chris Geidner (on TPS ruling):

  “What [the Court] decided… is that you cannot say [the DHS Secretary] implemented the law improperly… you can’t challenge that at all.” (45:37)

• Justice Sotomayor (via Geidner):

  “This is using the preposition ‘in’ to create a humanitarian crisis, to ignore the obvious obligation... to allow these people to apply for asylum.” (56:11)

• Chris Geidner (on agency rulings):

  “This is a huge decision... overturning a 90-year-old precedent… expertise is gone, independence is gone. The fallout for government is going to be massive.” (74:17)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 04:00 — Progressive victories and tensions in the Democratic Party
• 07:47 — Mamdani clip: “What real Democratic Socialism delivers”
• 11:07 — AOC calls for leadership change in Democratic party
• 25:38 — Start: Prairie Land Nine case explained by Safiyyah Khalid
• 30:35 — Expansion of terrorism laws to protests
• 37:19 — Grounds for appeal in Prairie Land Nine case
• 44:03 — Chris Geidner joins: Supreme Court session and immigration cases
• 45:37 — TPS ruling discussion
• 54:40 — "Metering" and U.S. asylum obstruction
• 65:01 — Alito/Sotomayor intra-court drama
• 72:05 — Supreme Court rulings on firing FTC and Fed members
• 73:22 — Ruling on postmarked ballots
• 78:35 — Closing, promo, and show wrap

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Tone

The episode maintains The Majority Report’s signature tone: irreverent, biting, and relentlessly critical of institutional failures on the left and right, with moments of gallows humor and frustration over the current legal-political landscape. The discussions are detail-rich, both accessible and analytical, with a strong emphasis on the real-world consequences of legal shift.

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Resources Mentioned

• Prairie Land Nine updates:
  DFW Support Committee: [Link]
  MLFA.org: [Link]
• Law Dork Newsletter:
  Chris Geidner’s Substack

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This summary omits advertisements, intros, outros, and fun half banter, and focuses exclusively on the episode’s substantive content.

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

You are listening to a free version

[Sophia Khalid]

of Majority Report with Sam Steater.

[Chris Geidner]

To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to Majority FM please.

[Sam Seder]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, June 29, 2026. My name is Sam Seder. This is the final five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Sophia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense center at the Muslim Legal Fund of America, attorney for one of the Prairie Land nine. Also on the program today, Chris Geidner, journalist, publisher of the Law Dork newsletter on Substack to discuss all the Supreme Court rulings that didn't come today, that came before today because today we also got a bunch of new ones. Meanwhile, after a post stock market close bombings of and by Iran, Trump announces a pre market opening cease fire. Again. Supreme Court rules Trump can't fire members of the Federal Reserve but can fire members of the Federal Trade Commission. Supreme Court also rules that states can count ballots that arrive after election day if they are postmarked by that day. Israel kills three including a baby in Gaza overnight as the Committee to Protect Journalists changes its definition of journalists to exclude Palestinians in Gaza. US Torture whitewasher John Yoo to advise the DOJ on the so called Russiagate investigations. Primary day tomorrow in Colorado may be the next Democratic insurgent day. Paul Plattner with a tiny edge in Maine. The big problem, recalcitrant Democrats. Putin announces a fuel shortage in the wake of Ukrainian attacks and Republican groups teeing up the FCC commissioner to pull Disney's broadcast license. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. Emma Vigland out today. I'm still getting a little bit of that static from the fan. Are you hearing it or no? It's about 90 degrees generally in this office then sometimes warmer outside. But it'll be a hot week, often cooler outside. I wouldn't worry about it. Gonna be a super El Nino. It's gonna be a fun summer. I will be out of office for some of that. More on that later in the week.

[Chris Geidner]

Juicy teaser.

[Emma Vigland]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

The big story in the wake of and it seems to like be metastasizing in some way. Now I'm of two minds of these reports of concern. It's really, I mean let's be honest, it's conservative Democrats that are are crying to the media. They're called moderate Democrats. But if they're the moderate Democrats. Who are the conservative Democrats? Like one guy in Texas, Henry Cuellar, because he doesn't subscribe to abortion rights. No, let's be clear. It is the conservative Democrats are upset because of the rising fortunes of progressives, whether it's DSA candidates in New York and in Pennsylvania or progressives in Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, other places across the country, perhaps in Colorado tomorrow. And part of it may be ideological. I think some of it is maybe the majority. But really, I think the nature of these type of Democrats is less about ideology and more about their own personal power and wealth accumulation and their advisors around them. Now, I do think that's tied into ideology and I don't think you get that corporate mentality if you don't have a neoliberal ideology. But I think if somebody could go to them and say you will still have your power and your sinecure, though this ideology will be preeminent, I think they'd be like, fine. But they also know that that can't really happen. And so they're freaking out. And it's sort of sad. You hear people like Van Jones saying moderates have to mobilize. And it's funny because what constituency does Josh gottheimer, for instance, have outside of those in his district? The wealthiest, I think, in New Jersey who want tax cuts. These people don't mobilize. These people hire people to go out in canvas. They don't canvas.

[Matt Leckie]

What? You haven't seen the swazi mentum.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, honestly, that's what's, I mean that's, that's their dilemma. Here is Zoram Mamdani being interviewed by ABC's Jonathan Karl. And let's also be clear. Mamdani is, I don't want to say once in a lifetime, but you know, of that nature, quality politician, he codes sort of more liberal, I guess. He's just extremely good at this. And he also really, really, I think, enjoys it. Play this clip.

[Emma Vigland]

Republicans are going to make you the poster child for the Democratic Party. Let them. We don't have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins. I won last November and, and over the course of these last six months, what we've delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible. We've delivered free childcare for two year olds for the first time in New York City history. We've delivered tens of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken advantage of by bad landlords. We've delivered 165,000 potholes being paved. And we've done all of these things, while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in our city's history. That's what it looks like to have democratic socialism. And what you're seeing is that New Yorkers experienced this for six months and made the decision that they wanted to see more of it on the national stage as well.

[Sam Seder]

All right. Now, I enjoy that clip because you see Mamdani list the things that he's been able to accomplish, which is sort of extraordinary within the context of whatever it is six months into office. I disagree with the premise of the question. Jonathan Karl is wrong. Mamdani will not be the face of the Democratic Party in these midterms for two reasons. One, because they have Donald Trump on tape saying, I'm not afraid of this guy. He's a good guy, he's handsome and he's, you know, he's doing good for New York. Two, they're going to make it Dara Lisa Chevalier. And a, because she didn't answer a question the way that they wanted her to with the New York Times. I think it was about prison abolition. But also because she's a woman of color and that is the absolute go to. She will be the new it girl. Remember, AOC, up until like, I think 2022, had more name recognition amongst conservatives than liberals because Fox News desperately tried to demonize her. And then you'll recall Nancy Pelosi decided to demonize Ilhan Omar when they took back the house in 2020. 2020, or was it 2018? I can't remember. Now. They had a bill called House Resolution 1, which was a catch all had a bunch of great stuff in it. And instead, the day they passed that, they also passed a resolution or started a floating one to censure Ilhan Omar and stepped all over their bill. The conservative Democrats are bad at this. But here is aoc, who is no longer, I think, going to be the, the demon that Republicans will, and frankly, conservative Democrats will trot out as a way of scaring people. I just don't think it's going to work in the same way that it, that it may have six years ago. But here is AOC fact.

[Sophia Khalid]

She had this to say. She said, we need significant new leadership. If people can't recognize that the game has fundamentally changed and can't adapt, then they need to make room for others who can. And she was referring to Jefferies and she's of course in the Senate to Schumer as well.

[Chris Geidner]

Do you think?

[Sam Seder]

What do you think about that?

[Sophia Khalid]

And what do you think Jeffries needs to do to prove that, if you think he needs to do anything to prove that?

[Ira]

Well, I think that anyone who says and issues a statement like this, I think it's important for them to get prescriptive about the changes that they want to see. I've been pretty clear about where I think the country should go. I think that we need to move forcefully to guarantee health care to every American. I think we need to move forcefully towards raising wages and taking on corporate corruption and profiteering. But there are a lot of folks who talk about change in leadership that don't necessarily articulate what their direction is. And so I would say that it's important that when we talk about change, we talk pretty specifically about the kind of changes that we want. Because there are a lot of people in this country and there are a lot of forces and lobbyists that want the Democratic Party to become even more pro corporate than it is. And so not everyone talking about change is talking about the same thing. And so when I talk about change, I talk about orienting the Democratic Party to be unabashedly working class and to orient itself around working class Americans. And I think that that part of the conversation, because it's kind of in vogue to be talking about change when people aren't prescriptive about what those changes need to be. I think we need to be asking further questions.

[Sam Seder]

Ira, now AOC now has the ability and she gets a lot of criticism for, for things that I think are legit to the extent that from a performance, performative stance, maybe people have some problem with. But she now has the ability to go to an audience that is would otherwise be DSA hostile and sell DSA or you know, just generally more progressive ideals to an audience that would be hostile to it if it was packaged somewhat differently and branded somewhat differently. And so there's, I think, in my opinion, immense value there. Bernie Sanders came out and launched this 2020 campaign by explaining why he was a Democratic socialist. That may have helped DSA in the long run. It may have. And built or built that brand maybe. I mean, you couldn't necessarily see numbers, but it may have made. But I don't believe that it helped his campaign. I believe it hurt his campaign. People rarely vote for a brand unless it has bad associations or good associations. People tend to vote more for policies and for politicians, for better or for worse. That doesn't mean that there isn't value in having organizations. There's a ton of it. And we're starting to see it now like DSA is genuinely like building on what they have built and extending and in many ways also has the ability to discipline and make sure that their members. You know, Kyrsten Sinema entered the House as a full on radical and then she just went off into la la

[Matt Leckie]

land, the Green Party. She was against the duopoly.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. But once she got there she really had no, no institutional infrastructure, no support, no constituent. I mean all of it. So please understand what I'm saying here. There is value to people working in extending the power of DSA and there's also value for people working at a 20,000 foot level changing people's perspectives on an issue by issue basis and providing like you know, air power against this backlash that we're going to get from conservative Democrats because they're, they're afraid of losing their power. Chuck Todd is out there now saying that Jeffries and Schumer can't win a primary today, which is true. And it's also freaking out the Republicans. But they think that they're going to make hay from it. But I don't think it's going to work. I think it'll work in like the hardcore right wing circles. But here's Mike Johnson trying to scare people about the DSA platform.

[Mike Johnson]

The, the insurgent left is taking over. Now listen, I don't know if you've seen this and if anybody shared it from the podium and if they have, forgive me for repeating it, but the, the dsa, the Democrat Socialists of America. Sounds so innocuous, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. I'll say that this is their platform. Listen, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published I think about a day or two ago. You can find this on the Internet. Okay, here's just a sample of what they're about. They put this on paper, they're saying the quiet things out loud. Abolish the electoral college. Replace the two party system with a multi party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, Implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting.

[Matt Leckie]

They're saying the quiet part out loud.

[Sam Seder]

Incidentally, there is something called, you can, you can look up the npv. I think it is the NPV pact, the National Popular Vote pact and something like 40% of the states or at least 45% of the states in terms of electoral votes have signed on to this. So there's already a foot way before anybody heard the words dsa. There's been a decades long attempt to get rid of the electoral college. The idea that there are conservative voters or people in the middle, let's say, who are like I didn't realize DSA was in favor of ranked choice voting. What? Like. Like that's supposed to be the quiet part. They're sitting in. They're sitting in their offices trying to fig out what are the parts of this that we can talk about without it sounding like we're promoting them. Is there any more of this?

[Mike Johnson]

In all elections? Abolish. Well, establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Abolish ICE and grant amnesty for all. End sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. Free Palestine.

[Sam Seder]

Pause it for a second. You know who's ending sanctions on Iran and Venezuela? Donald Trump.

[Matt Leckie]

Also, didn't Trump take a stake in Intel?

[Sam Seder]

Exactly.

[Mike Johnson]

Quote, for a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute US And Israeli.

[Sam Seder]

Pause it for a second. Is he not aware of what's going on in his party? This feels like. Just take one, right? Like, let's do a draft and then we'll add it afterwards. Guys, go ahead.

[Mike Johnson]

The genocide in Gaza. Abolish the carceral state. Quote, redirect police and prison funding to public services as steps towards abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state, y'.

[Ira]

All.

[Mike Johnson]

It goes on and on and on. Defund the Department of War. Replace the president and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen and subordinate to Congress, which they're hoping to take over.

[Matt Leckie]

That's awesome.

[Mike Johnson]

And the last one is abolish the Senate. Now, some of you may agree with that, but just leave that one there, okay? It's fine. I'm kidding.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. The problem is that there's too many. That people are like, yes, please. Even when he has to say, like,

[Matt Leckie]

the Democratic Socialists of America. That sounds so innocuous. Like, that's the problem for you. Because in the 80s, that didn't sound innocuous.

[Sam Seder]

100%. 100%. In a moment, we're going to talk to Safiyyah Khalid, deputy Director of the National Security Criminal Defense center at the Muslim Legal Fund of America, about the Prairie Land 9. These stories are nuts. And then we'll be talking to Chris Geithner about some of the Supreme Court rulings that we've had over the past week. In the meantime, word from our sponsor. Have you ever thought maybe I should be doing something to protect myself from stalkers or creeps who don't like what I post online? Or, frankly, fishers or people looking to steal my identity? Any of those things? Here's what you do. Go to www.joindeleteme.com Majority. Enter the code Majority and you are going to get 20% off delete me which removes your personal information that is being sold online for like literally 8 bucks. I've been using Delete Me for probably a decade now, years and years before they became a spons obviously because I didn't want my public information out there mostly because of doing this. But since then I've also realized like I get no spam calls. I get. I have far less worry about identity theft, phishing stuff. It's super easy for hackers to find your some information on on the dark web and then head over to a data broker, pay eight bucks, match it up and then they're off to the races. You can get with AI, you can, you're. We're all like vulnerable to scammers using this personal data. They're like I say, pairing it with the dark web. Google yourself. You will be shocked at the amount of information that that's there about your family members, etcetera, etcetera. Delete Me can help you get an individual plan for little as little as over eight bucks a month. Discounts are even better with a two year plan or when you enroll your partner or family. Delete Me does all the hard work to wipe your personal information from data broker websites and they do it on a regular basis because these sites get repopulated. So they send you a digest once a month to let you know what they've gotten rid of and where. One of thanks to Deleteme for sponsoring the program and also for keeping my private stuff private. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our audience. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com majority. Use the code Majority at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.joindeleteme.com/majority. Enter the code majority at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com majority. Code is majority. We'll put the link in the podcast in YouTube descriptions. Quick break. We'll be right back with Safiya Khalid. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority report. Emma Viglin is out today. A pleasure to welcome to the program Sophia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense center at the Muslim Legal Fund of America. Cleed, or I should say Sophia, you represent one of the Prairie Land nine who were part of an anti ice protest almost a year ago. To the date on July 4, 2025. This is in Texas. And they have received between the nine of them, sentences from 30 to 100 years. It is the first, as far as I know, the first instance of the US government using the NPSM7 directive, which basically lists a whole slate of just buzzwords being sort of criminalizing them. Tell us who your client is.

[Sophia Khalid]

Thank you for having me on, Sam. Yes, my client is Maricela Rueda. She is a young mother, 33 years old. She has a daughter that she loves. 12 year old daughter, she's an artist, a poet, a doula. Never been in trouble with the law. Had a non violent part in this noise demonstration. And her family and her, you know, our team, we're just reeling from this excessive, shockingly excessive sentence.

[Sam Seder]

All right, so tell us what happened. We call it a noise demonstration. I mean, it makes sense. It's July 4th. People lighting off fireworks out in front. What exactly happened both with your client and with these nine defendants?

[Sophia Khalid]

So they had a group chat where they had been talking about having a noise demonstration on the fourth of July to show solidarity with immigration detainees at the Prairieland Detention Center. In that group chat, they talked about the noise demonstration as being a very low risk, safe, introductory type of demonstration activity. They went, they show up, she talks about wanting to be heard and she's saying these chants to them. Some of the other protesters also had brought fireworks that were fired into the air. Government witnesses admitted no damage or harm caused by the fireworks to property or people. When officers showed up and the protesters started fleeing my client and many of these defendants fled. After they fled, one of the officers was aiming at one of the protesters and another one of the demonstrators, Benjamin Song, had fired a suppressive fire not at him, but near him. That officer shot back and he was grazed by a ricocheting bullet. He made a full recovery, he got a few sutures and he was out of the hospital in three hours. Thank God.

[Sam Seder]

The shooter shot on the ground, right? I mean, that's okay.

[Sophia Khalid]

Yes. So, but all of them were arrested. And then this is where you, you mentioned the national security Presidential Memorandum 7, where not this being treated. As for the majority of the protesters that were not involved in the shooting, instead of this being treated as a civil disorder or a trespass, civil disobedience or property damage incident, they government took the novel decision to charge this as material support of terrorism. They charged multiple attempted murder accounts against all of the demonstrators, even the ones who weren't there at the time of shooting. Under this theory, the Pinkerton liability theory, which basically means if it was foreseeable to anyone that was there that violence could occur, they could be held liable for attempted murder. The jury rejected all of those counts. The jury found for all of them, except for a Benjamin Song, found them all not guilty on the multiple attempted murder counts. On the discharging of firearm counts, of course, because they were not involved in that activity. But it comes out of that National Security Presidential Memorandum seven where it's the administration dictating to the Department of Justice to charge as domestic terrorism activities that now include trespass, property damage and doxxing can all be considered domestic terrorism. Now. So you're seeing this very rarely use of the domestic context statute being applied on American citizens involved in nonviolent protest activity, which leads to this cascade that we see afterwards and how they achieved what they achieved legally here, these charges and then using all of these sentencing enhancements, the terrorism enhancement, to get these massive, massively disproportionate, disparate sentences for these defendants.

[Sam Seder]

Can, can you explain to me how a presidential. I can understand, okay, the DOJ is going to charge based on this, but where, like, how does this happen under the law? Like, I mean, just because the President has written a memorandum and has said to the doj, I want you to charge people this way or that way and pretend that antifa is a, some type of like criminal conspiracy as opposed to people who agree that we should be against fascists. How does a judge not say, like, what's the law they broke?

[Sophia Khalid]

So that's a great question. And that is why we took on this case, because this is a dangerous expansion of how the terrorism laws are being applied. And it's pushing what is First Amendment activity essentially into national, the national security space. This statute, it's 2339A call, titles it as providing material support to terrorists. Those acts which can be property damage, causing property damage on federal property, can be charged as providing material support to terrorists. That statute does not require that you are a member of a domestic terrorist organization or, or foreign terror. It doesn't require any tie to any organization. This can be used against anybody. Now at any protest where there is federal property damage, you can be charged as providing material support to terrorists under that statute. And I'm pointing that out because you're mentioning how does this happen under law? This is so disparate, so disproportionate, and in a lot of these sort of novel cases, you only have a handful of cases to compare to, but we have 1500 plus recent cases, federal criminal cases, to compare this to where the government didn't do this. They actually got it right in those cases. And Those were the January 6 Capitol rioters. Except in that case, 140 officers were injured, broken bones, some with career ending injuries. And we had a lot of speech leading up to the riot where the people that were charged, they said that they wanted to kill members of Congress, hunt down members of Congress, that they were taking their weapons there, Many of them took arsenals of weapons to the Capitol. And in those 1500 cases, we didn't see any prosecutions under this statute, but that conduct absolutely would have qualified for prosecution under that statute.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, I don't, I mean, like talk about destruction of federal property. I mean, absolutely.

[Sophia Khalid]

And if it's, you know, about, you know, the lives of law enforcement, 140 officers were injured much more severely there. But when you bring those charges into the terrorism space, they qualify for this sentencing enhancement. Everyone is asking, how did we end up with these sentences? The terrorism enhancement is rarely used. The most severe federal sentencing enhancement that exists and all it requires is that the offense was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government through intimidation or retaliation. Also, that intent would have applied very clearly to any of the January 6th protesters. But in those 1500 plus cases, the government didn't even seek the terrorism enhancement. In the vast majority of them. In the handful, the small handful that they sought it in, most of the judges refused to apply it to them. And in the very couple that they did, the leaders of the seditious conspiracy, the Oath Keepers, proud boys, and this is literally is less than, I think five cases that actually received it. Out of those 1500, most of judges used to apply it. The average sentence for the January 6th defendants was two years. And that's excluding all the probation only sentences.

[Sam Seder]

I think I am of the mind that the terrorism statute should not apply to either, frankly. It clearly is obvious that like you can't apply it to nine protesters, one of whom, and we'll get to this in a moment, wasn't even, I don't even know if they were there. They just were arrested for moving magazine articles or magazines. So I, you know, like, I just don't know how, how is it possible under this statute to even protest your federal government without running afoul of, unless you do it, I guess, in your apartment. You sit in your apartment and you don't go online and you just start yelling out your window. But I mean, honestly, like, how is it possible? How can this be constitutional? Like the whole point of protest is supposed to be the primary aspect of prot. The whole First Amendment is ultimately so that you can protest your own government.

[Sophia Khalid]

Absolutely. And there are cases on that. When it's political activity, First Amendment protected activity, it's not supposed to come into the terrorism crackdown. Right. This is actually how we have the 8th amendment in the first place was, you know, in the, in, in England, in old England, we had special horrible punishments for political dissidents. And America decided we don't actually want to crucify our political dissidents. But this is where we've landed. Now we have the administration dictating that the nonviolent critics of the government are going to get life sentences, 50 to 100 years. That's a life sentence for these people. We're saying 50 to 100 life sentences for nonviolent critics of the government when we have an average two year sentence for their violent insurrectionist supporters. That's not democratic society in any meaningful sense. But the way that they're doing it, how they are achieving it is through this eroding of the Constitution at every level. So you know, I mentioned like for example at the trial, they were acquitted on a lot of the, all of the violence charges. Most of these protesters were acquitted on all the attempted murder, the discharging of firearm. But the judge still applied the attempted murder guideline calculation when he was calculating their sentence that was acquitted conduct. He still used that. That's not supposed to happen. That was reformed very recently. So we're seeing this happen in these cases and that's why it's important to spotlight these cases. I mean, most of the material support of terrorism convicts in this country, these are cases coming out of Al Qaeda and isis. More recently, judges that had to deal with this terrorism enhancement have realized this isn't really a helpful tool for sentencing people because that enhancement always recommends a maximum sentence. So you have dozens of cases which we had put before the court of ISIS and Al Qaeda, material support convictions, getting three to 12 year sentences. And now we have these nonviolent protesters in the US with these life sentences. So there's a significant disparity here.

[Sam Seder]

Is there an opportunity for appeal?

[Sophia Khalid]

There's an absolutely an opportunity for appeal.

[Sam Seder]

It seems like there's like multiple ones, frankly. I mean, both ranging from the judge applying standards of that really make no sense. I mean, if you're acquitted of the violent stuff, applying those standards would be just equivalent to applying those standards when somebody comes in for a parking ticket. I mean, it doesn't make Sense. But also I think just the statute itself sounds, the enhancement itself sounds like there's constitutional issues. So tell us what is planned for an appeal.

[Sophia Khalid]

So the appeal is going to be really important. I think all of the defendants have well preserved issues. There were a lot of issues with the trial. For example, they were prevented from using a self defense. One of the defendants was prevented from using the self defense defense even though at trial it came out that this was a suppressive fire type situation. A lot of problems with the sentencing that we discussed with the jury selection, the expert that was used in the case. They brought in somebody to talk about Antifa who basically talked about flag symbolism, wearing black anonymous clothes at a protest, using signal things that, you know, mainstream civil rights organizations recommend to everybody as just kind of digital security protests, surveillance type security measures. So there's, there's a lot of anti fi.

[Sam Seder]

All I will add that my children were primarily black and I use the signal. I just want to say and, but also my understanding is, is that the government in its own sort of internal assessment of Antifa has said this is not a national security, this is not a terrorist group. It's not a national security threat. So how can you be charged with terrorist activity by basis of being of a group that the US Government itself says is not a terrorist group?

[Sophia Khalid]

So that's that. And that's the interesting point and the really worrying point about this statute. You didn't they none of them needed to be a member of Antifa for them to be charged with this statute. The government did not need to prove that at trial. They did not prove that at trial. It was in the. If you read through the jury instructions, all that they had to prove was that they provided material support for one of three predicates. One of them included property destruction. So some cameras, a stop sign, were some tires. These were damaged at the protest. Material support can be anything. In the last 20 years that's been. It's basically anything and everything, including your speech alone. One judge has said it could be a bouquet of flowers. Material speech is anything except for religious and medical supplies. So if you provide your speech in support of somebody destroying federal property, no matter what the dollar amount is or what that property was, you can be charged under this material support of terrorism statute. Domestically, there is no domestic terrorist group requirement under that statute. It can touch anybody.

[Sam Seder]

It's nuts. We haven't heard the end of this. Safiyyah Khalid Deputy Director of the National Security Criminal Defense center at the Muslim Legal Fund of America I suspect we'll have the opportunity to talk to you in the future about this case. If folks want more information on this, where can they go?

[Sophia Khalid]

There is an excellent DFW support committee group. They have uploaded all the trial exhibits, notes from every single day of the trial. They have updates on each of the defendants. You can also go to mlfa.org where you can read our press release and we'll be giving updates there about the appeal as well.

[Sam Seder]

Okay. We will put those links in the podcast in the YouTube description as well as Majority FM. Sophia Khalid, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Sophia Khalid]

Thank you for having me.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, quick break. When we come back, Chris Geithner, journalist and publisher of the Law Dork newsletter on Substack. Geithner will give us his take on some of the latest Supreme Court rulings, maybe even touch on the ones today. And maybe I'm curious if he has an opinion on the Prairie Land nine cases. All this and more in just a moment.

[Emma Vigland]

Right back,

[Sam Seder]

Sam. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority part. Emma Viglin out today. Joining us now, Chris Geidner, journalist, publisher of the Law Dork newsletter on Substack. Chris, welcome back to the show.

[Chris Geidner]

Thanks, Sam.

[Sam Seder]

I just want to just tell the audience that I know that you literally ran back from the Supreme Court for this, that this is like, this is like today is like the equivalent of like Christmas and New Year's and Hanukkah

[Ira]

and

[Sam Seder]

I don't know, maybe eat all thrown in together with the super bowl

[Chris Geidner]

for some reason on the same day.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. And of course, you know, you probably spent all weekend at that 250 state fair. All right, let's go through. There were some big cases released today. Tomorrow is the final day of the cases being announced that have been decided. But let's talk about some that have been over the past couple of days. Let's start with there's two different cases involving immigration. One was allowing the president to get rid of temporary protected status for 300,000 Haitians. I can't remember how many Syrians and presumably all 1.5 million refugees or asylum seekers who are here under temporary protected status. And of course, metering, which is sort of the, I guess the upon entry version of this on some level. Tell us about those two cases.

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah. So I mean, we had these efforts that from the start of the Trump administration to end temporary protected status as they came up for renewal. And the effort was essentially put on hold by lower courts because of the way that Christi Noem went about it. But Then it got up to the Supreme Court. And as to Venezuela, the court had let it go forward, but they stopped it as to Haiti and Syria and said, we're going to hear this case. And what they decided in an opinion by Justice Alito is, is two important things. First, that there's no challenge that can be brought to the statutory, no statutory challenge that can be brought to what Kristi Noem did or to what any DHS secretary did does. And what that means is that you cannot say that she implemented the law improperly. They had said that the law requires consultation with other departments, including the State Department. And they were saying she didn't do so. The DHS didn't do so. It was literally a one sentence email the same day. And so they were saying, you violated the law. And what Alito said is, you can't challenge that at all. Then the second case in the Haiti case specifically, they had also raised a constitutional claim, an equal protection claim, based on what we all know very well, the clear racism that was involved in the Trump administration's effort to cancel Haiti's tps. And honestly, most of these temporary protected status, this is infamously they're eating dogs line from Trump about Springfield, Ohio and their Haitian immigrants who had moved there. And what in a really an appalling decision by Alito, he essentially wrote around it, he refused to quote any of it and just said, no, they gave non racial reasons. There are non racial reasons for everything that he said.

[Sam Seder]

Here. Here's what I can't understand. Temporary protected status is for people seeking asylum because they Ira, there's either like political danger in their homeland or natural disaster or something that makes it impossible for people to go back and sort of like live their lives at that time. Right?

[Chris Geidner]

It is, I will say it's outside of assault.

[Matt Leckie]

It is.

[Chris Geidner]

It is. Essentially it's because it's so many people facing such bad conditions that there's this ability for the secretary to just say, hey, anybody who's here from that country, you don't need to go back and you get certain protections while you're here, including, including, importantly for right now, work protections.

[Sam Seder]

And the temporary thing is just meaning, like you're not a citizen.

[Chris Geidner]

It doesn't like, because it's reviewed regularly, the temporary protected status comes up again and you look at the country conditions, decide if it's all right. But the reality is that in countries where there are really bad conditions, it's been in effect basically some places since TPS had been passed.

[Sam Seder]

All right. And let's be Clear. TPS is not something discretionary by the dhs. TPS is a law that was passed. So what I don't understand is, doesn't there have to be, like, almost like an environmental review? Isn't there, like the statute clearly says, like, so what?

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah,

[Sam Seder]

doesn't have to be standards. Like, okay, this is like a math problem.

[Chris Geidner]

The country standards. The law actually has standards. The problem is that there. There is also what happens in a lot of immigration and criminal laws. There's what's called a judicial review bar. And basically what it says is that the determination of the Secretary isn't reviewable by court. Now, the question was, what. What does that mean? And what the people challenging Noem's decision were saying is that that doesn't mean that if she just ignores the standards that the law sets up, that consultation that I mentioned, if she just ignores that altogether, it doesn't mean that you can't challenge that. You can't challenge her decision, ultimate decision, her ultimate determination. But if she just ignores what the law says she has to do, you can challenge that. But what Alito said is, no, every step leading to that final determination is a part of the determination. And therefore, you can't challenge any of that under the administrative procedure.

[Sam Seder]

That's insane. And it's. I mean, first off, so people should understand this. Like, what I also find just sort of bizarre about it is, so there's two issues, it seems to me. One is at least. At least one is if she's saying that she doesn't. Alito saying, you can't even challenge whether she actually went through the process of making this determination, now we can infer that she didn't go through this process because a. Of all the things the administration has said about basically the asshole countries and black people and the Haitians are driving around drunk and they're, you know, eating cats and dogs. But also on the other side, in terms of, like, the country, there's 1.5 million displaced Haitians there. Just like the other day the chief of security was kidnapped and his family, like, they're still reeling from the earthquake. They're still reeling from the multiple coups that we have been engaged in in the country over the past decade or two. It's hard to imagine, short of a country that would still be underwater from a tidal wave, a better example of a country that meets the threshold of a blanket sort of like protected status for people.

[Chris Geidner]

And there's. There was, toward the end of. It was an issue in the oral arguments, and toward the end of Alito's opinion. He pretends to address it. He's like, yeah, there are all of these, like, wild possibilities now that people are saying that this opinion unleashes. Like, they could just cancel all of tps. They could. Why couldn't they allow tps? They.

[Sam Seder]

Why couldn't they?

[Chris Geidner]

Also Democratic president could issue. Even though tps, as we talked about, is supposed to be renewed regularly, what's stopping a Democratic Homeland Security secretary from saying, you know what? I know it says two years, but I'm going to do it for 15 years. And there's nothing you can do about that because it's not reviewable. My determination is not reviewable. And Alita was like, well, there could be other challenges. No, not under your decision. Under your decision, it's not reviewable. And that's what Sotomayor or I'm sorry, in that one. I forget who the dissenter was. I think that was Kagan dissented.

[Sam Seder]

It's, it's really is stunning. We'll get to sort of like Alito's abandon, if you will, on that. You know, there is a real quality. That ruling of his reminds me of Anthony Kennedy saying, hey, if you come up with a way of determining how if something is too gerrymandered, I'll take a look at it. It knowing, like, I'm off the court soon. But we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So the metering thing. Tell us about.

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah, the metering. I mean, this was. This ended up being. Even though that the TPS was truly like next day. I mean, I was on a call with, with people in Springfield that day, and they were talking about, like this, this could be like, people coming in next week to deport these people. But the metering case was a policy that's not in place currently that essentially as different ports of entry felt that they were overwhelmed with people coming, trying to seek asylum. What they started doing was this metering policy that they would only allow a certain number of people in each day. And what the challenge was is the people that didn't come in, they were saying that they had, they didn't reach, they didn't put a foot in the border, even though they were trying to do this the legal way.

[Sam Seder]

I should just say, I would just say that both international law and US Law says if you step foot in a country, you can apply for asylum and you are necessarily deserving of and required to get some form of process to adjudicate whether your asylum claim is legitimate or not.

[Chris Geidner]

And so what they're claiming is that even though they approach the port of entry, even though if there weren't this metering policy, they would have touched U.S. soil, that because they technically stay on the Mexico side of the border, they are not arriving in the United States and don't get that protection that you just said because they didn't set foot in the United States. But under the US Law, what it is, is arriving in the United States. And what Alito said here is they're not arriving in the United States. And that was the end of that. If you didn't have Sotomayor, Justice Sotomayor was the dissenter here and she read from her dissent from the bench and she essentially said like the most common sense way that she said is if you're on the train, I'm in D.C. i go to New York a lot. If you're on the train and the conductor says we're arriving in Penn Station, does that mean that the train, if the train is still running and you haven't stopped, does that mean he's lying to you? Have you not arrived in Penn Station when he says that? She is saying this. This is using the preposition in. To create a humanitarian crisis, to ignore the obvious obligation that the US has to allow these people to apply for asylum and then get the proper process.

[Sam Seder]

So from a practical matter, is the US Setting up a like some form of like pre border where they, where they don't let people get to the border?

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah. And the, the horrifying part of this, I am blanking on the name of the ship, but what Sotomayor talks about in her dissent is the entire basis for modern asylum treatment came out of this ship that during World War II was carrying 900 people, Jewish people, trying to get a, trying to find a place where they could land. And they were turned away everywhere, including in the, in the port of. I believe it was the port of Miami and they ended up having to return to Europe. And I believe it was 500 of those 900 people ended up being killed in concentration camps.

[Sam Seder]

This was the Ms. St. Louis, right? Is that what it was?

[Chris Geidner]

That's it, yeah. And in the aftermath of that, basically the world said we, we really shouldn't allow that to happen again. And that is the basis for modern asylum.

[Sam Seder]

We're literally reenacting it.

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah. And here we are on the border creating under this ruling you could do more than metering. Metering was the policy at issue. But in theory, there, there is nothing to stop just saying we're not going to allow anyone who is going to seek asylum to. To touch the border. And so therefore we're not going to have to let anybody apply for asylum. We're not going to have to give them that process.

[Sam Seder]

Couldn't. Well, I don't know how you do this from a shift ship standpoint because, I mean, what constitutes our border? Is it the control, like on the water? Is it, you know, whatever it is

[Chris Geidner]

that it would be U.S. u.S. Territory.

[Sam Seder]

So you have, you made it in by by boat.

[Chris Geidner]

Well, this is the issue with why, why remember the horrifying, like the razor wire over the Rio Grande. That's the reason for that is that they want to keep people from reaching the US Side of the water.

[Sam Seder]

And what authority does the United States have to put razor wire in Mexico? I presumably they do with the Mexico.

[Chris Geidner]

They put it on the border, like

[Sam Seder]

right at the border. But what if I stuck my hand fictions. Well, that's what I'm saying. If I stick my hand through the razor wire, even though I don't cross over it, then theoretically I am in the United States.

[Chris Geidner]

That is actually true. And there are those cases. And that's when you hear stories about like boats picking people up in the water. It's because they reached the United States. But related to that, I do want to point out that, like, what Sotomayor said in this dissent is that, like, this is encouraging illegal crossing. Like, of course, is literally encouraging illegal crossing.

[Sam Seder]

Because people should be clear, if I'm walking up to the border and I'm not allowed to go to the checkpoint where I would check in, get into the system, say I'm here to. I'm claiming asylum. Okay, here's your docket. You know, come to court in two months or whatever it is, and we will adjudicate your asylum claim. Some instances, I guess, is happening even quicker, some longer, if I don't have the ability to approach that border, because 10ft before that border, somehow the U.S. manages to stop me, I'm just going to go down the river and go with the coyotes essentially so that I can get across that border. And then once I'm in there, my claim for asylum. I've gone around the metering.

[Chris Geidner]

No, and I mean, Sotomayor sort of had two points to that. The first was like the humanitarian point that you're creating a humanitarian crisis with this ruling. But the second was actually a legal point that, like, why are you interpreting a law to encourage lawbreaking? Like, why are you reading this word in. In a way that essentially would mean that Congress wanted to encourage lawbreaking with the passage of this law. Like, that's nonsensical and we shouldn't be interpreting laws that way.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, the reason why Congress passed this law is because they felt that anybody who comes to the United States

[Sophia Khalid]

should,

[Sam Seder]

should have their case for asylum adjudicated. Because like you say, we have a lot of examples in history where that has been a problem that we didn't. And it's not rather like, let's make this into some type of challenge, like if you can get in, like, this

[Chris Geidner]

isn't a game of like, be a Ruby Goldberg contraption.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. This isn't like some type of like, you know, American ninja reality show where it's like, if you can manage to get in, well, you win the contest. It's not supposed to be that. That's the point. Like, there is an intent here was not to see how sneaky people can

[Chris Geidner]

be, but rather just simply the opposite of the intent.

[Sam Seder]

It's just a way to sort of like establish. This is the most convenient way to establish intent for asylum. And also to, you know, if you've got a Russian gymnast that wants to. I mean, that's where a lot of that came from too. Right. I mean, the idea that, like, we want to give people an opportunity to be asylum.

[Chris Geidner]

And so I mean, it's so funny that you went to that example when like the, the showing both where America's at now and the reality. I mean, it was all. It was scientists, it was the build up after the, like during the Cold War.

[Sam Seder]

It's, it's. So Alito gets miffed by Sotomayor. Right.

[Chris Geidner]

Because yeah, Sotomayor spoke a little too long for, for a woman, I mean, who, who's to say what actually was going on here? But Sotomayor gives a very long spoken bench dissent, which is not one. It's not unusual for a bench dissent because the whole point when you're reading a dissent from the bench is like, I'm mad. And I want everybody to know that's true when conservatives do it, it's true when liberals do it. So on just a basic level, it wasn't a surprise that this went on for a while. And just as a matter of fact, Sotomayor does read long when she's. Some justices just like give like a very quick summary of their opinion, even when they're reading the majority. But Sotomayor regularly gives a rather long bench statement, so it wasn't surprising. And yet when she finished, Alito both initially acted like he didn't even know she was going to read her dissent, and then suggested that she went longer than he expected and said, like, if I had known that, I would have spoken more. And then he went on to say something about the fact that, like, the metering policy had been implemented by two administrations as the best way to deal with this growing problem. And it was just. It was literally something that none of us in. In the press room had seen. That example, an example of that precise thing happening before.

[Sam Seder]

He's letting his Virgona flag frost.

[Chris Geidner]

And the day. The next day, the court did release a statement that was given to CNN that he had been in his. He had been informed he would be reading bench dissent, and there had been a misunderstanding.

[Sam Seder]

All right, well, let's. Let's talk about the idea of Alito leaving. Yeah, there's been a lot of speculation about whether he's going to stay on the court. The. For me, the big tip off was that recording of his wife, that was a year or so ago by Lauren Windsor, when the wife was saying this was all a controversy around, or she was talking about how she saw. An LGBTQ flag across the lake or something. So she flew her MAGA flag, and then she had plans to put up a flag that says Virgonia, which means shame. We actually have some Virgona mugs around here. But she said, and I'm gonna sue. And the statute of limitations, only five years now, five years at that time would have had to be during the Trump administration. And there is a chance that they may lose the Senate and the Republicans. And if they do, Alito is not going to get replaced by a. It may not get replaced, frankly, based upon the precedent set by Mitch McConnell. So what's your sense here?

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah, I mean, I like, that's what we went into this term with, understanding that, like, here's the reality, like,

[Sam Seder]

you'd

[Chris Geidner]

have to be pretty dense not to remember sort of the cause and effect of Justice Ginsburg not having retired under Obama. And so there was this thought that if they want to keep a strong majority, one of the two of Thomas or Alito would retire. I, since January, have. Have really felt like that. There was just a. I've been covering the court in person since 2010, and for the first time ever, Alito actually seemed kind of nice and not mad and grumpy. He's a guy who, when he was losing, he was grumpy. And even when the court, they took the majority, he still just seemed angry and aggrieved and like, just since January, it sort of like has felt like he is settled on the fact that like I see the light at the end of the tunnel sort of thing. And then we got these three opinions from him on third on Thursday. That could be unless he has the NRSC campaign finance case, which is one of the three remaining now, he could be done with majority opinions for the term. And. It's possible that either he or Justice Kavanaugh have the NRC opinion are the two most likely people to have it. And then we had a sort of surprise today given how late we are in things. Alita wasn't on the bench today and you normally wouldn't expect that this close to the end of the term.

[Sam Seder]

Wait, does that mean he's left town or.

[Chris Geidner]

The court doesn't tell it? We learned the court didn't tell us anything. It's possible. I mean, who knows, maybe, maybe he got his opinion out Thursday because he knew that he had a doctor's appointment Monday at 10 that he couldn't change, which is absurd. But I mean, this is the thing about the Supreme Court. Like unless they want to tell us something, they won't tell us.

[Sam Seder]

So tomorrow is the absolute last day.

[Chris Geidner]

Right? I mean, today at the end of the opinions, Chief Justice Roberts announced that the, the final opinions for the term will be released tomorrow, Tuesday at 10. And the cases that are left are birthright citizenship, the two transports bans and the coordinated party expenditure limits.

[Sam Seder]

Let's just briefly get your take on. There were two major rulings today as far as I know. One was the the President can't fire members of the Fed because that would be not their words. That would actually implicate things like our portfolios which we don't want to touch. But he can fire members of the,

[Matt Leckie]

the

[Sam Seder]

Federal Trade Commission because they inhibit corporate power and that we're not in favor of. They also said that states can rule. They don't have to, but they can determine on their own that if a ballot has been postmarked by election Day that they can count it up to as many days as they think is normal in California. Takes seven days. If anything comes in within seven days and it's been postmarked by election Day, they'll count it. Which creates some problems obviously in terms of like the conservatives saying there must be something afoot here. How is it there's new ballots coming in. But, but the court said that's okay.

[Chris Geidner]

The court? Yeah. What the court there was a challenge saying that the federal election day statutes preempt states from having those because election day is election day. So it needs to be done by then. It was a very weak argument. And actually the scary thing in reality is that four justices went along with that. Barrett though wrote the majority opinion saying that it's not that it doesn't pre empt state laws allowing that late return as long as it's, if it's postmarked by election day but returned, received later, you can allow that. And the Chief justice joined that. But I mean, yeah, it is the

[Sam Seder]

second one with the Fed versus the ftc.

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah, that was the majority opinion in the FTC case. Was the three decision. That alignment that we're used to with the liberals dissenting when it came to the stock portfolio case, I mean the Federal Reserve case, that was a 5, 4 decision. And again Roberts wrote both majority decisions and this time Kavanaugh joined Roberts on that side. I do. This is a huge decision. Slaughter is the case and I think it's good that that was the name that we got to remember. This FTC case, the court overturned a more than 90 year old precedent called Humphrey's Executor that allowed for essentially expertise to be protected in the government. When you have agencies, multi member agencies that have expertise, bipartisan expertise at the head of the agency that essentially Humphrey's executor said you can have four cause removal protections, you need to, the President needs to give an actual reason for firing the person. And what Robert said today is no, that's not true. And the real question coming out of this is going to be the fallout for other agencies that we know, for example, that like the National Labor Relations Board, American Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission are all going to be affected by this. The question going forward is going to be does this reach things like the Tax Court, the Court of Federal Claims, which are not Article 3 courts with independence within the judiciary, those are sort of quasi courts that are under the President's authority under Article 2.

[Sam Seder]

The amount of damage he's going to be able to do unilaterally, even if he loses the Senate is going to be extraordinary because people should remember he doesn't care about putting somebody on the FTC as much as he cares about disabling the agency.

[Chris Geidner]

There's a little back and forth there because the problem is, I mean if you get, if there are good rules in place and you want to reverse them, if there are rules that the Democratic Majority Commission passed, you need a quorum to have the Republican appointees reverse it. And so I mean, I've been looking into that a little specifically with like the eeoc. But I mean, that's going to be a, I think you are going to see over the next six months efforts to make sure before the Senate switches hands, if it does.

[Matt Leckie]

Right.

[Chris Geidner]

That all of these agencies do have.

[Sam Seder]

So we may see a lot of firing and then a lot of attempt to nominate. It's going to be interesting because

[Emma Vigland]

this

[Sam Seder]

is going to happen. These nominations are going to happen when a couple of senators are going to have to be back home because they're nervous about winning their reelection. And you got the summer recess. This is a, this is going to have real implications over what we see over the next couple of months. Chris Geiner, thank you so much for taking the time. I know how crazy this time is for you. Really appreciate it. We'll put a link to the Law Dork newsletter on substack@ Majority FM and in our podcast in the YouTube description. Really appreciate you breaking these down for us.

[Chris Geidner]

Yeah. And I'll be, I'll be writing today about those cases, the firing cases. So.

[Sam Seder]

And then you're back to the court

[Chris Geidner]

tomorrow and then back to the court in the morning. Yep.

[Sam Seder]

All right, enjoy.

[Chris Geidner]

Thanks, Sam.

[Sam Seder]

Thanks again. All right, folks, that's it for us today. Milton Apathy says disaster. Yeah, indeed. And it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse, folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. And you can IM us at the fun half in the fun half. During the fun half, help this show survive and thrive. Join themjorityreport.com join themjorityreport.com Also, don't forget, just coffee. Fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code majority. Get 10% off. And it's a co op. It's a great company. Great coffee, just coffee Co op. Also check out the AM Quickie amquickie.com three days a week. You get the thing for free if you want it. Five days, a couple of bucks a month. Or check out our Instagram Majority fm, our Twitch Majority fm, Facebook, Majority fm. Check them all out. Spread our stuff on all those sites. It helps. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe?

[Matt Leckie]

Yeah, we had a Sunday show for our Left reckoning [e-mail] left Reckoning and talked a little bit about the socialist proving their mettle in the recent elections. And focus even more about hating Jack Schlossberg and him losing on the Upper east side, which I'm almost as happy about as any of the.

[Sam Seder]

Is it the Upper east side or west side?

[Matt Leckie]

Was it the Upper west side is one of those.

[Sam Seder]

He goes the Upper west side.

[Matt Leckie]

But either way, I'm glad that he is not going to nepotism his way into Congress in embarrassingly embarrassing fashion. And we go through some of his lowlights and say good riddance. So check it out. Patreon left reckoning.

[Sam Seder]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to the fun half three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow.

[Matt Leckie]

What?

[Sam Seder]

What is heck going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program.

[Chris Geidner]

Matt.

[Sam Seder]

What is up, everyone? Fun half. No.

[Chris Geidner]

M. Keen, you did it.

[Sam Seder]

Fun half.

[Chris Geidner]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Seder]

Let's go, Brandon. Fun half. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint you, everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Ira]

Fundamentally false.

[Mike Johnson]

No.

[Sophia Khalid]

I'm sorry.

[Emma Vigland]

Women.

[Sam Seder]

Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.

[Ira]

Where is this coming from, dude?

[Sam Seder]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A.

[Sophia Khalid]

Yes. Hi, is this me?

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Chris Geidner]

Is this me?

[Sam Seder]

Is it me? It is you.

[Sophia Khalid]

If it's me.

[Sam Seder]

Hello, it's me. I think it is you who is, you know, sound every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go smell like libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Chris Geidner]

Gobbled ego.

[Sam Seder]

We bailed him.

[Chris Geidner]

So what's 79? 9 plus 21 challenge.

[Sophia Khalid]

Man, I'm positively quivering.

[Sam Seder]

I believe 96. I want to say 8572-108550-11389. 11.

[Sophia Khalid]

For instance, $3,400.

[Chris Geidner]

$1900.

[Sam Seder]

5, 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.

[Emma Vigland]

Actually.

[Chris Geidner]

You're making me think less.

[Sam Seder]

But let me say this poop. Call it satire. Sam Goes with satire. On top of it all.

[Chris Geidner]

My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do.

[Sam Seder]

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Sophia Khalid]

It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.

[Mike Johnson]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I don't.

[Chris Geidner]

But you should know,

[Sophia Khalid]

people just don't

[Sam Seder]

like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it. I do love that. Gotta jump, gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw them. Sent to a gulag.

[Chris Geidner]

Outrageous.

[Sam Seder]

Like, what is wrong with you?

[Ira]

Love you.

[Chris Geidner]

Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Love you.

[Emma Vigland]

Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Bye.